The Bible Museum favored by Trump sinned and tells us about repentance

Bridge times they are obviously genuine.

We are in the controversial Museum of the Bible in Washington, the capital of the United States, which is located near the Congress building.

The museum’s attractions this summer are the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls on loan from the Israel Antiquities Agency IAA.

The scrolls found by Bedouins and archaeologists in the Qumran caves of the West Bank were a sensation when they started to be excavated from 1947. Among other things, the scrolls contain hundreds of the oldest known – and slightly different – ​​versions Biblical Of the texts that ended up in the Old Testament from around 250 BCE to 70 CE.

At their smallest, the fragments are only the size of a coin. But because of their rarity, they are very valuable.

And they involve the biggest scandal in the Museum of the Bible.

Conservative evangelical christian David Green founded the Hobby Lobby store chain in 1972 and rose become a billionaire. He started planning the foundation of the Bible Museum when new research results on the Dead Sea Scrolls were announced in the early 2000s.

The Green family spent tens of millions of dollars buying tens of thousands of treasures and misacquisitions for the museum, which opened in 2017.

There were 16 scroll fragments from various sources, such as a merchant who bought scrolls from the Bedouin in 1947 Khalil Iskander Shahin from the boy William Kandolta. (Kando replied to HS recently that he does not comment on fragments over the phone).

Particular attention was attracted by a fragment that combined two sentences from the Old Testament criticizing homosexuality. They do not belong to the same part of the text and it would be quite unique to find them in the same fragment.

The researchers were startled. Is the whole museum a scam?

Not anyway. But in the next two years, also commissioned by the museum itself Colette Lollin the report of the research team concluded that the scroll fragments purchased by the museum are fakes.

Apparently, the Green family, who are opposed to gay marriage rights, were drawn by combining anti-homosexual clips with the fake sold to them, like the Norwegian professor Årstein Justnes evaluate even before the opening of the museum (he confirmed his position later in his book and in an email to HS).

Green’s family repented and promised to repent. Colette Loll was given free rein to curate in 2020 From Discovery to Deception exhibitionwhich talked about mistaken purchases.

“I was really impressed by how openly they handled the publication of our research results, even though they were obviously disappointed when the collection was revealed to be fake,” Loll, now retired, tells HS.

Professor Ira Rabin criticizes Lolli’s methods but admits to HS that much is unclear about the origin of the fragments and declaring them to be fakes was an image win for the Green family, who emphasized their remorse.

Rabin reminds that the collection also has a lot of genuine treasures that he himself has dated.

Scandals continued. The Green family had made a huge amount of purchases without checking whether the provenance, i.e. in short, the origin and sales chain is in order, whether it is stolen goods and whether the purchases have a sales and export permit.

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the country descended into chaos, and national treasures were even stolen from the Iraqi National Museum. Through intermediaries, they ended up in Green’s collections.

As part of the penance exercise, Green has given back – especially fines of three million dollars after – at least 17,000 antiquities, mostly for Egyptian and Iraqi authorities.

So everything is finally okay? We ask the museum’s marketing director Matthias Waltherilta.

Walther transferred to the service of the museum after the biggest uproar in November 2023.

“As far as I can see, the mistakes were acknowledged and corrected transparently, so there is no need to deal with them in my work,” he says.

However, everything that was wrongly acquired in the museum cannot be returned, he says.

“If we returned very early Biblical From Afghanistan to the Taliban movement, it could be destroyed.”

According to Walther, billionaire Green does not demand that his old understanding of the Bible be reflected in the museum and its texts.

“This is a non-political, non-denominational museum, and the exhibition texts are based on research. We even have Jewish staff and agnostics.”

Green on Donald Trump’s supporter, opponent of abortion rights and major donor to the Republican Party.

While Trump press national museums to a more conservative line more and more tightlyhe supports the Museum of the Bible and donated his family Bible to it in September.

“If the president of the United States wants to come to the museum, of course he can. However, the organizer of the president’s speech was the Religious Liberty Commission, and we are only acting as hosts.”

On a museum tour the texts we see follow, at least on the surface, the mainstream of academic research.

However, the emphasis is on Americans. Museum discusses, for example, the American Civil War and how the pro-slavery South also appealed To the Bible.

With the Bible the atrocities of the Crusades and many other conquests are also justified. Why not treat it like your civil war?

“That would also be a good exhibition idea,” says Walther politely. “The goal is to present a wide variety of perspectives.”

One text mentions the disagreements between evangelicals close to the Green family and mainstream Protestants, but does not comment on them.

Finland has also been mentioned. There is a Finnish paleontologist who has mapped evolution and criticized creationists Björn Kurténin (1924–1988) mention how the dead cannot answer our questions, but we can perhaps hear “whispers” from the material left behind.

of Israel The antiquities office has loaned the museum quite new discoveries, such as the decorative stone of the Magdala synagogue excavated in 2009 from the dawn of our era and the Megiddo mosaic floor found in 2014, which mentions “God Jesus Christ”. It is dated in the museum to the 230s.

They get their own room Biblical more and more translations, because the Green family finances translations for even the smallest language groups.

There are plenty of interesting anecdotes. It turns out that the president who owned slaves Thomas Jefferson dulled the pain of sensation by removing it From his Bible passages criticizing slavery.

Collectable rarities include the “Naughty Bible” from 1631. One word not is missing, so the sixth commandment takes the form “commit adultery”. “Killer’s Bible” is on the other hand from 1795. In it, the word filled accidentally starts with the letter k, so the meaning is: “kill the children first”.

It is openly mentioned that different denominations have different ones Bibles in use. And no one version is elevated above the others as “correct”, although the King James Bible of the 17th century receives quite extensive treatment.

Last published in the week The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby investigative journalist who wrote the book Michael Blanding tells HS in a video interview that the museum’s policies are the result of considerable tensions.

The museum has hired good researchers who try to take care of the facts. At the same time, the Green family’s collection emphasizes Protestantism and, at the latest, the museum store’s offerings also emphasize old-fashioned evangelicalism.

The same continues in the museum’s newsletters, the professor points out Brent Nongbri. In his opinion, they are no longer unaffiliated with denominations, but more openly evangelical.

Museo has already garnered four million visits since its opening in 2017, and in its current form seems to impress a wide variety of people.

Jessie, Blake and Carrie Peblinski Madison was pleased to note that texts on religious controversy seemed to strive for neutrality.

“This was better than we feared. Especially interesting of Washington and Jefferson’s correspondence on religion when the Constitution was being drafted,” says Blake Peblinski.

For many visitors, the museum functions as the Green family hopes: as a confirmation of their own faith.

“Love of God and To the Bible brought us here. Everything exceeded our expectations and was deeply inspiring,” he says Tiffany Davis From Dallas.

In addition to the researchers mentioned in the text, background information has also been provided by professor Jutta Jokiranta and docent, university lecturer Raimo Hakola.